Janet Reno, the strong-minded Florida prosecutor tapped by Bill Clinton to become the first female U.S. attorney general, and who shaped the American government’s responses to the largest legal crises of the 1990s, died early Monday at her home in Miami. She was 78.

The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, her goddaughter, Gabrielle D’Alemberte, told The Associated Press. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1995.

Reno brought a fierce independence to her job. From the FBI siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Texas to the investigation into then-president Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky, she was adamant that her prosecutors and agents work outside of the influence of politics, media or popular opinion.

Her supporters believed she brought a heightened level of integrity and professionalism to the attorney general’s office. They admired her insistence upon legal exactitude from her employees, and praised her caution in prosecutions.

Linda Spillers/Bloomberg News.
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno speaks at a news conference on Nov. 5, 1999, in Washington.

Reno resisted weeks of pressure to arrest sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, waiting until she believed agents had sufficient legal justification to tie him to the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. He was later convicted.

“She was a very powerful force for lawfulness,” said Walter Dellinger III, a Duke University law professor who served as solicitor general during Reno’s tenure. “She was always challenging to make sure there was a sound legal basis for what people were doing. And she was adamant about separating the department from politics.”

Business leaders criticized her lengthy prosecution of Microsoft on charges of anti-competitive violations — a case that ultimately ended in a settlement under the George W. Bush administration.

Civil libertarians took Reno to task for her handling of the espionage case against former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was held in solitary confinement for nine months after being charged with mishandling nuclear secrets, only to be released on a lesser charge. Even Clinton said he was troubled by the case; Reno refused to apologize.

Republicans criticized her bitterly for pandering to the Clinton White House — she refused, for instance, to launch an independent investigation into whether vice-president Al Gore illegally fundraised from the White House during the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign. Democrats, meanwhile, disparaged her for abandoning her political patrons. Reno said Hillary Clinton never forgave her for authorizing an investigation into the Lewinsky affair.

Reno remained in office longer than any other attorney general of the 20th century, and won high marks outside of the capital for her plain-spoken manner and folksiness: her preference for kayaking on the Potomac River to hobnobbing on Washington’s cocktail circuit; her oft-told childhood stories from the Everglades, with a mother who wrestled alligators; and her home in Florida with a family of peacocks, all named Horace.

A self-described “awkward old maid” who stood nearly 6-foot-2, Reno showed a willingness to lampoon her image. She joined actor Will Ferrell on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” as he played a wooden version of her in a skit called “Janet Reno’s Dance Party.”

She was Bill Clinton’s third pick for attorney general. He had promised to nominate a woman for the post, but his first two choices — corporate lawyer Zoe Baird and New York federal Judge Kimba Wood — withdrew following allegations they hired illegal immigrants as nannies.

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Reno, who had no children and therefore no nanny issues, came to the president’s attention through his brother-in-law Hugh Rodham, a public defender in Dade County and an admirer of Reno’s legal record.

Reno also drew praise from Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund and a friend of Hillary Clinton. Edelman reportedly admired Reno’s aggressive prosecution of child abusers and child-support cases.

When he nominated Reno for attorney general, the president noted that she kept her phone number listed — an unusual risk for a prosecutor. “She has lived the kind of life in real contact with the toughest problems of this country that I think will serve her very well as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer,” Clinton said.

Janet Wood Reno was born in Miami on July 21, 1938. Her father, Henry, spent more than 40 years as a police reporter for the Miami Herald. Her mother, the former Jane Wood, was an investigative reporter for the now defunct Miami News.

When Reno was a child, the family moved into a home her mother built outside of Miami, on what then was the edge of the Everglades.

Reno graduated from Cornell University in 1960 and in 1963 from Harvard Law School, where she was one of a handful of women in a class of more than 500. After a stint at a small Miami law firm (she said larger firms passed her by because of her gender), she was hired to the Florida State’s Attorney office. The prosecutor’s administrative assistant, Seymour Gelber, assigned her to what he thought was the dead-end job of organizing the office’s juvenile division.

“It was an appendage nobody paid much attention to, so I sent Janet over there and figured she would dawdle around like everybody else and write another report,” Gelber told the Chicago Tribune in 1993. “Instead, she pasted the juvenile court together in about two months.”

Protecting children would remain a focus of Reno’s career. In speech after speech, she connected crime to poor social conditions such as poverty and a broken school system.

She was appointed Dade County State’s Attorney in 1978, and won five straight elections running as a Democrat in the predominantly Republican county.

Mobs reportedly shouted “Re-no!” as they set fires

Many minority residents blamed her for the 1980 acquittal of four white police officers accused of killing an unarmed black motorcyclist — a case that sparked race riots in Miami. More than a dozen people were killed, hundreds were injured, and then-Florida Gov. Bob Graham (later a U.S. senator) called in thousands of National Guard troops to keep the peace. Mobs reportedly shouted “Re-no!” as they set fires.

Reno’s work reaching out to black and Latino residents eventually helped calm tensions. She put a priority on hiring minorities, and aggressively pursued absentee fathers to pay their child support obligations.

Clinton nominated Reno to the attorney general post in February 1993. At the time he praised her rock-solid integrity — a characteristic that led her to buy cars new, at sticker price, to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

Within a month of her appointment, Reno confronted a case that colleagues said would define the rest of her career: the standoff with followers of self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

Koresh had already killed four federal officers and had withstood a weeks-long standoff with the FBI when agents asked Reno to authorize a raid of the compound.

She gave the go-ahead for the agents to storm the building with tear gas, she said, after being convinced that children were being abused inside. During the raid, a fire broke out and engulfed the compound, killing all 80 or so people inside. Later that day, an anguished-looking Reno stood in front of television cameras and took full blame.

I’m accountable. The buck stops with me

“I made the decision,” she said. “I’m accountable. The buck stops with me.”

Reno later stood her ground during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, when Rep. John Conyers Jr. told her she was right to offer her resignation, saying, “I’d like you to know that there is at least one member of Congress that isn’t going to rationalize the death of two dozen children.”

“I haven’t tried to rationalize the death of children, Congressman,” she responded, glaring, her voice quavering. “I feel more strongly about it than you will ever know. But I have neither tried to rationalize the death of four agents, and I will not walk away from a compound where ATF agents had been killed by people who knew they were agents and leave them unsurrounded … Most of all, Congressman, I will not engage in recrimination.”

Postmedia NewsA photo of Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh that was introduced at his trial on May 19, 1997.

For the rest of Reno’s career, fringe groups pointed to Waco as evidence of the deadly misuse of federal force. Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and injured scores more, reportedly saw Waco as inspiration for his terrorism.

Although personally opposed to capital punishment, Reno authorized her prosecutors to seek the death penalty against McVeigh. He was killed by lethal injection in June 2001, the first federal execution since 1963.

Late in her term as attorney general, Reno faced similar questions about federal force. The Miami relatives of young Elian Gonzalez, whose mother had drowned as the pair attempted to flee Cuba to the United States, refused to return the child to his father, who wanted to take him back to Cuba.

The saga of Elian held the country’s attention for much of early 2000, with Miami’s Cuban expatriate community adamant that the boy stay in the United States, a federal judge ordering that they return him to his father, and Reno flying to Florida herself to negotiate.

After the Miami family ignored Reno’s deadline for them to comply with the judge’s order, she authorized federal agents to enter their home and seize the 6-year-old. A photo of a SWAT-equipped border patrol agent appearing to point a gun at the young Gonzales in a closet became a much-reproduced image — a visceral symbol of the passions felt on all sides of the debate.

Alan Diaz/APElian Gonzalez is held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of two men who rescued the boy from the ocean, while federal agents to enter their home to seize the 6-year-old on April 22, 200.

After stepping down from the attorney general’s office in 2001, Reno returned to Florida and the next year ran for governor. Despite her almost universal name recognition, party officials threw their backing behind Tampa attorney Bill McBride, reportedly because Reno had not sought their blessing before embarking on her campaign.

Reno narrowly lost the nomination; McBride subsequently lost to Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two Republican presidents, in the general election.

Over the next decade, Reno gave speeches about criminal justice issues, particularly as they related to children. She served on the board of the Innocence Project, the nonprofit organization that works to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA evidence.

When asked by reporters what she wanted to do after Washington, she said she wanted to read, garden and perfect her Eskimo roll, a kayaking maneuver. As during her time in the attorney general’s office, she often said that hers had been an exciting, interesting, lucky life.

“I’ve had a thoroughly good time,” she told the Miami Herald in 1998. “I have the opportunity to serve my country and it’s been extraordinary, and if I go home, I go home.”

A teenager caught up in a double shooting in Florida that left his older brother dead has been quietly deported to Canada following a remarkable standoff between U.S. federal authorities and the state judge who sentenced him, The Canadian Press has learned.

American immigration agents escorted Marc Wabafiyebazu from Miami to Montreal earlier this month where he was reunited with his mother, Roxanne Dube.

“It’s done. It’s done. It’s done,” Dube, a senior diplomat, said in an interview from Ottawa. “He has his life ahead of him.”

Now 16, Wabafiyebazu is back home in Ottawa studying privately for his high school equivalency and reconnecting with family and friends as he relaunches his life shattered by the gunfire in March last year that killed Jean Wabafiyebazu, 18, and another teen.

Although authorities never accused the younger sibling of shooting anyone, he nevertheless found himself facing a minimum 40-year prison sentence on charges of felony first-degree murder. Instead, in a plea deal rarely seen before, Wabafiyebazu pleaded no contest in February to reduced charges of felony third-degree murder.

In exchange, Circuit Judge Teresa Pooler sentenced him to in-custody boot camp, house arrest, and a minimum five years probation to be served in the United States.

What neither Pooler nor prosecutor Marie Mato seemed to have realized at the time is that federal immigration authorities would have no intention of allowing him to serve his probation in the U.S.

“They had not foreseen that at all, which created a very tense situation,” Dube said, her voice choking. “They were beside themselves.”

In late July, as Wabafiyebazu was completing boot camp with flying colours, immigration authorities went to pick him up. State authorities, however, refused to hand him over without Pooler’s consent.

What followed were a series of court hearings at which Pooler and Mato made it clear they would never have signed off on the plea agreement had they known he would be deported immediately upon release.

“The court thought he would be serving five or 10 years of probation here,” Wabafiyebazu’s lawyer, Curt Obront, said from Miami. “The court and prosecutor were displeased that he was returning to Canada so quickly.”

Pooler and Mato also appeared to think Dube had perjured herself in February when she promised to supervise her son’s probation in the U.S.

Dube, however, insisted she had made her promise in good faith and had been fully prepared to stay in the country for as long as her son was required to be there.

“They felt that I had misled the court (but) I couldn’t for the life of me understand where they were coming from. It was very much of a shock.”

To avoid further complications, Dube decided to return to Canada at the end of July, leaving her son in a state known for being extremely sticky about relinquishing its grip on foreign offenders.

AP Photo/Wilfredo LeeIn this Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016 photo, photos of Marc Wabafiyebazu, left, and his brother Jean, right, are shown at their mother's home during an interview in Miami.

For several weeks, Pooler appeared to be exploring every legal avenue to keep the teen behind bars. On Sept. 2, however, she relented. Wabafiyebazu had adhered to the terms of his plea deal and federal laws took precedence over state laws.

“The court realizing that and having checked the law said, ‘Well, good luck to you, and I hope you learned a lesson from this’,” Obront said. “I’ve been doing this 33 years and I’ve never seen anything quite like this; the whole thing is surrealistic.”

Two days later, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement spirited the teen from prison to a secret location. He was flown back to Canada Sept. 6.

Although his probation continues to run in Florida, Wabafiyebazu is free to pursue his life without restriction in Canada, although he remains inadmissible to the U.S. If his probation, which could be reduced to five years, passes without incident, he will have no criminal record. A violation could see him jailed for up to 60 years.

The teen was not ready to speak publicly about his experience as he readjusts to normal life, but his mother believes the rigours of boot camp were good for him and he has grown as a person — even as the six-foot-tall teen lost 50 pounds in the process.

“I really see a child or a young man who wants to make a contribution to society in a good way,” said Dube, who’s now Global Affairs’ director general of the Canadian Foreign Service Institute based in Ottawa.

“It’s a case of someone who has gone through so much and who is more than able and prepared to be an example to other young people.”

MIAMI — On any given day, a visitor to Miami’s Wynwood neighbourhood might see a hipster pecking at a vintage typewriter outside a coffee shop or a young professional enjoying roasted duck carnitas at a fusion restaurant next door.

Two blocks away, a family from the Midwest, Latin America or Europe might be exploring the graffiti murals of the Wynwood Walls or wandering into an art gallery. At night, couples line up around the block to get into a trendy tavern.

The recent announcement that 16 people have been infected with the Zika virus by mosquitoes in the Wynwood area has scared away some visitors. Federal health officials last week warned pregnant women to avoid the neighbourhood and a 1-square-mile area around it. But many remain undaunted.

“Everything here has a very modern vibe, a modern feel,” said Danny Perez, 25, who sometimes comes to Wynwood from South Miami to work. Pointing out a nearby organic juice and food place next to a letterpress store, he said, “These are niche markets that you don’t find everywhere in Miami.”

Alan Diaz/The Associated PressVisitors and tourist visit the Wynwood Walls, Aug. 5, 2016, in the Wynwood area of Miami.

Just north of downtown Miami, Wynwood once was a garment and warehouse district but went into decline in the 1970s. Artists began setting up shop around the turn of the century, and galleries soon began opening in the decaying buildings and empty lots. Business owners started hosting an Art Walk one night a month, giving locals and curious tourists a chance to see and be seen.

The art created inside the buildings began spreading to the neighbourhood’s exterior walls, and the annual Art Basel show that later came to Miami gave those works an international stage.

“I feel like I’m in Disneyland for the art world,” said Jonathan Yubi, 31, who came down to Miami from Orlando last week to pick up copies of his fledgling art publication Artborne Magazine from a printer. He used the trip as an excuse to check out Wynwood for the first time.

Courtney Clark, 28, has been working at one of the area’s retail stores for about a year. She didn’t seem worried about Zika as she ate outside Thursday afternoon.
“I have a little bracelet with mosquito repellant on it,” Clark said. “But other than that, I’m not pregnant or looking to get pregnant anytime soon.”

While unafraid herself, she has noticed a drop in visitors.

“There are definitely fewer people around,” Clark said. “It will probably stay like that for the next couple weeks or so, until we get out of the news.”

Alan Diaz/The Associated PressA family from Peru takes a selfie in front of the Wynwood Walls, Aug. 5, 2016, in the Wynwood area of Miami.

Paul Villard, 23, said he thought about not showing up at the Wynwood restaurant where he works, but he ultimately decided to go.

“You can’t really let that stuff interfere with life,” Villard said, acknowledging though that pregnant women should probably stay away for a while.

Until now, the only known Zika cases in the United States were in people who had recently travelled to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Zika, a mild disease for most, can lead to severe brain-related birth defects if women are infected during pregnancy.

Health officials announced Aug. 1 that Zika had turned up in Wynwood. They clarified this week that the actual infections were limited to a 500-square-foot residential area north of the art district, and that area has since been bombarded with insecticides.

They have urged women of child-bearing years to avoid the area, and urged pregnant women there to be tested.

Florida’s Health Department has said there’s no evidence of mosquitoes transmitting Zika elsewhere in Miami.

Health and dollars are both on the line as the Zika scare collides with Wynwood’s art and tourism boom.

Joel “Smiley” Atkinson, 47, said he’s seen many neighbouring businesses move out over the five years he’s worked at LBK Shoes Corp. Property values have skyrocketed in the area, and many longtime residents and businesses can’t afford to stay.

“It’s a bad thing for some people, and it’s a good thing for other people,” Atkinson said. “For the art people, maybe it’s good. For the people doing business, that’s bad.”

Clark thinks the health news is unlikely to hurt Wynwood’s economic and cultural growth in the long run.

She’s certain the Zika fears will pass eventually, and the tourists will return.

MIAMI — An unarmed black therapist is suing the Florida police officer who shot him while he tried to protect his autistic client.

The Miami Herald reports Charles Kinsey filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against North Miami officer Jonathan Aledda, accusing him and other officers of using excessive force and false arrest.

The 47-year-old Kinsey is seeking unspecified damages. Aledda shot Kinsey in the leg July 18 as he lay in the street next to his 27-year-old client. Arnaldo Rios had walked away from the group home where he lives. Kinsey was trying to coax him back when a woman called 911 saying a suicidal man was walking down the street with a gun. Rios was actually carrying his toy truck.

A cellphone video captured events leading up to the shooting.

WSVN / APIn this Wednesday, July 20, 2016, frame from video, Charles Kinsey explains in an interview from his hospital bed in Miami what happened when he was shot by police on Monday. Kinsey, a therapist who was trying to calm an autistic patient in the middle of the street, said he was shot even though he had his hands in the air and repeatedly told the police that no one was armed. (WSVN via AP)

MIAMI — Government health officials are warning that pregnant women should avoid travel to a Zika-stricken part of Miami and urging expectant mothers who frequent the neighbourhood to get tested for the virus, after the number of people feared infected through mosquito bites in the U.S. climbed to 14.

In a warning issued Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said men and women who have recently visited the area should wait at least eight weeks before trying to conceive a child.

Gov. Rick Scott asked Monday for a federal emergency response team to help the state combat the spread of the virus in the U.S.

AP Photo/Rick BowmerIn this July 19, 2016 file photo, a tray of Aedes dorsalis and Culex tarsalis mosquitos are shown collected at the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District near Salt Lake City.

Officials announced four cases on Friday, believed to be first people to contract the virus from mosquitoes within the 50 states. Ten more cases were announced Monday. The CDC’s emergency response team will help Florida officials in their investigation, sample collection and mosquito control efforts. The White House said the CDC team would be deployed to Florida “in short order.”

Zika is such a mild disease that most who get it don’t even know they’ve been infected, but it can lead to severe brain-related birth defects if women are infected during pregnancy. The disease has swept through Latin America and the Caribbean in recent months.

Florida health officials said they’ve tested more than 200 people in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties after reports of local transmissions of the virus in early July. Of the 14 people infected, two are women and 12 are men.

Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesRobert Muxo, a Miami-Dade County mosquito control inspector, prepares to use a fogger to spray pesticide to kill mosquitos in the Wynwood neighborhood as the county fights to control the Zika virus outbreak on July 30, 2016 in Miami, Florida.

“We will continue to keep our residents and visitors safe utilizing constant surveillance and aggressive strategies, such as increased mosquito spraying, that have allowed our state to fight similar viruses,” Scott said in a statement.

The Florida infections are thought to have occurred in a small area just north of downtown Miami, in the Wynwood arts district. The travel warning covers an area of about one square mile in Wynwood to the east of Interstate 95 and south of Interstate 195.

U.S. health officials do not expect widespread outbreaks of the sort seen in Brazil and in Latin America and the Caribbean, in part because of better sanitation, better mosquito control and wider use of window screens and air conditioners.

RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty ImagesThis file photo taken on June 7, 2016 shows Miami-Dade mosquito control worker Carlos Vargas pointing to the Aedes aegypti mosquito larvae at a home in Miami, Florida. US regulators on July 28, 2016 called for a halt to blood donations in the Miami area as investigators probe four potential non-travel associated cases of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which can cause birth defects. If confirmed, the cases would mark the first time that mosquitoes carrying the virus are known to be present in the mainland United States.

The area, known for murals spray-painted across warehouses, art galleries, restaurants and boutiques, is rapidly gentrifying and has a number of construction sites where standing water can collect and serve as a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Many walking the streets recently were unaware the virus had spread and confused about how the disease is transmitted.

Jordan Davison and Melissa Felix work for a cruise line and were enjoying their day off Monday looking at the murals in the neighbourhood.

“It’s not like a big thing right?” said 25-year-old Davidson. “It’s kind of freaky — there’s so much going on we didn’t know, didn’t really think about it … I might wear bug spray going forward.”

MIAMI — When Thomas Matthews noticed North Miami police officers responding to a commotion a block from his usual outdoor sitting spot, he grabbed his binoculars and saw a middle-aged black man and a younger autistic man sitting in an intersection.

The officers, he said, grabbed rifles from the patrol cars’ trunks and crept toward the men. The autistic man was holding something in his hand. Peering through his binoculars, he could see the object was a toy truck. Matthews says he tried to tell an officer who had stayed behind for crowd control, but she told him to back up.

Soon, three shots rang out and therapist Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to coax his 27-year-old autistic client back to a nearby facility, was wounded in the leg. The shooting drew national attention because much of what happened before the shooting was captured on video.

“If she would have told the other officers, maybe they wouldn’t have shot,” said Matthews, a 73-year-old African-American. He ran a North Miami flower shop before retiring and has lived in the area for years. He said he has never had a problem with North Miami police.

“But I guess with all the shootings that are going on, they are nervous and shook up,” Matthews said.

Monday’s shooting comes amid weeks of violence involving police. Five officers were killed in Dallas two weeks ago and three law enforcement officers were gunned down Sunday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Before those shootings, a black man, Alton Sterling, 37, was fatally shot during a scuffle with two white officers at a convenience store. In Minnesota, 32-year-old Philando Castile, who was also black, was shot to death during a traffic stop. Cellphone videos captured Sterling’s killing and the aftermath of Castile’s shooting, prompting nationwide protests over the treatment of blacks by police.

At a news conference Thursday, North Miami Police Chief Gary Eugene said the investigation has been turned over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the state attorney’s office. He called it a “very sensitive matter” and promised a transparent investigation, but refused to identify the officer or answer reporters’ questions. Eugene, a Haitian-American with 30 years of South Florida police experience, just became chief last week.

Google MapsThe exterior of the North Miami Police Department.

“I realize there are many questions about what happened on Monday night. You have questions, the community has questions, we as a city, we as a member of this police department and I also have questions,” he said. “I assure you we will get all the answers.”

During a Thursday news conference, John Rivera, who runs Miami-Dade County’s police union, said the officer believed Kinsey’s patient was armed, and the officer was trying to shoot the patient in an attempt to save Kinsey’s life.

Nancy Abudu, the American Civil Liberties Union’s legal director in Florida, said her group hasn’t received any brutality complaints about the North Miami police or about any questionable shootings before this week’s.

Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon II, said he is already talking to North Miami city officials about a monetary settlement for his client, who is married with five children. City officials did not return a phone call seeking confirmation.

Jacquelyn Martin / Associated PressThe Justice Department is working with local law enforcement to decide how to proceed, U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch told reporters.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters the Justice Department is aware of the shooting and working with local law enforcement to gather all of the facts and to decide how to proceed.

U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, who represents the area, said she was in shock.

“From what I saw, he was lying on the ground with his hands up. Freezing. But he was still shot,” said Wilson, a Democrat.

“This is not typical of North Miami,” she said. “We’re not accustomed to this tension. … This cannot happen again.”

The chief said officers responded after getting a 911 call about a man with a gun threatening to kill himself, and the officers arrived “with that threat in mind” — but no gun was recovered.

Cellphone video shows Kinsey lying on the ground with his arms raised, talking to his patient and police throughout the standoff with officers, who appeared to have them surrounded.

“As long as I’ve got my hands up, they’re not going to shoot me. This is what I’m thinking. They’re not going to shoot me,” he told WSVN-TV from his hospital bed, where he was recovering from a gunshot wound to his leg. “Wow, was I wrong.”

Screengrab / Associated PressCharles Kinsey demonstrates his response to Miami police in an interview from the hospital, where he is recovering.

The video does not show the moment of the shooting. Napoleon said there was about a two-minute gap in which the person who shot the video had switched off, thinking nothing more noteworthy would happen. It then briefly shows the aftermath of the shooting. He would not say who gave him the video.

“Lay down on your stomach,” Kinsey says to his patient in the video, which was shot from about 30 feet away and provided to the Miami Herald. “Shut up!” responds the patient, who is sitting cross-legged in the road.

Kinsey said he was more worried about his patient than himself.

“I’m telling them again, ‘Sir, there is no need for firearms. I’m unarmed, he’s an autistic guy. He got a toy truck in his hand,” Kinsey said.

Police in South Florida shot an unarmed black caretaker Monday as he tried to help his autistic patient.

Charles Kinsey was trying to retrieve a young autistic man who had wandered away from an assisted living facility and was blocking traffic when Kinsey was shot by a North Miami police officer.

In cell phone footage of the incident that emerged Wednesday, Kinsey can be seen lying on the ground with his hands in the air, trying to calm the autistic man and defuse the situation seconds before he is shot.

“All he has is a toy truck in his hand,” Kinsey can be heard saying in the video as police officers with assault rifles hide behind telephone poles approximately 30 feet away.

“That’s all it is,” the caretaker says. “There is no need for guns.”

Seconds later, off camera, one of the officers fired his weapon three times.

A bullet tore through Kinsey’s right leg.

Kinsey said he was stunned by the shooting.

“I was thinking as long as I have my hands up . . . they’re not going to shoot me,” he told local television station WSVN from his hospital bed.

“Wow, was I wrong.”

Kinsey said he was even more stunned by what happened afterwards, when police handcuffed him and left him bleeding on the pavement for “about 20 minutes.”

His attorney called the video “shocking.”

“There is no reason to fire your weapon at a man who has hands up and is trying to help,” Hilton Napoleon told The Washington Post in a telephone interview Wednesday night.

Napoleon called for the department to fire the officer. “From my understanding, I believe he is a white male,” he said.

North Miami has not identified the officer or his race. The department said it is investigating the incident, which reportedly came after officers responded to a 911 call “of an armed male suspect threatening suicide.”

Screengrab / Associated PressCharles Kinsey demonstrates his response to Miami police in an interview from the hospital, where he is recovering.

“Arriving officers attempted to negotiate with two men on the scene, one of whom was later identified as suffering from Autism,” police said in a statement Tuesday. “At some point during the on-scene negotiation, one of the responding officers discharged his weapon, striking the employee of the [assisted living facility].”

Police did not respond to multiple requests for comment. According to their statement, the officer who fired his weapon has been placed on administrative leave, as is standard policy in police-involved shootings.

Authorities have not said why the officer opened fire on an unarmed man with his hands prominently in the air.

The shooting comes at a tense time for both police and civilians.

Police across the country are currently on alert after lone gunmen ambushed officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, killing eight.

At the same time, police are also under scrutiny after the fatal shootings of two black men earlier this month. Bystanders filmed Baton Rouge police fatally shooting Alton Sterling in the early hours of July 5. Two days later, Philando Castile was fatally shot by a cop in Falcon Heights, Minn. His girlfriend streamed the aftermath on Facebook Live.

Loren Elliott / Tampa Bay Times via APA Black Lives Matter protest, held in response to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, in Tampa on Monday, July 11. Both men were killed by police officers.

Like those two incidents, the Monday afternoon altercation was partially captured on camera.

Before the cameras started rolling, the young autistic man wandered away from a North Miami assisted living facility. A manager at the facility told WSVN that the man was “about 23 years old, he’s autistic, he’s non-verbal [and] he’s relatively low-functioning.”

The autistic man sat on the ground, blocking traffic, while he played with a small white toy truck, Napoleon told The Post.

Kinsey, an employee at the facility, went to retrieve him.

Around the same time, someone in the area called 911 and reported seeing a man with a gun threatening to commit suicide, police said.

According to Napoleon, Kinsey was trying to persuade the autistic man to get out of the street when police approached with their rifles raised.

With the Sterling and Castile shootings on his mind, Kinsey laid down on the ground and put his hands up in the air.

I was thinking as long as I have my hands up . . . they’re not going to shoot me

“I was really more worried about him than myself,” Kinsey told WSVN, referring to the autistic man.

Two bystander videos capture snippets of what happened next.

A video from before the shooting — obtained by Napoleon and shared with The Post — begins with bystanders saying “Look, look, look,” in Spanish.

“Mira, mira, mira,” a man can be heard saying, training his cell phone camera on Kinsey, who is on the ground with hands up and trying to get the autistic man to do the same.

“Lay down on your stomach,” Kinsey tells the young man.

“Shut up,” the autistic man shouts. “Shut up you idiot.”

Kinsey turns his attention to the police.

“Can I get up now?” he asks. “Can I get up?”

As police aim their assault rifles at the men in the street, Kinsey tries to explain to them that they pose no threat.

Screengrab / Associated PressCharles Kinsey spoke to reporters from a hospital bed after he was shot by police while trying to help an autistic patient.

“All he has is a toy truck in his hand. A toy truck,” Kinsey can be heard saying in the video. “I am a behavioral therapist at a group home.

“That’s all it is,” he says, referring to the toy truck. “That’s all it is. There is no need for guns.”

“Let me see your hands,” a cop can be heard shouting at the autistic man. “Get on the ground. Get on the ground.”

The autistic man then begins to make noises, apparently playing with his toy.

“When he shot me, it was so surprising,” he said. “It was like a mosquito bite, and when it hit me, I’m like, ‘I still got my hands in the air, and I said, ‘No I just got shot!'”

“Sir, why did you shoot me?” Kinsey recalled asking the officer.

“He said, ‘I don’t know.'”

A second video captures the moments after the shooting, as officers placed the injured Kinsey and the autistic man into handcuffs.

“He was like ‘Please don’t shoot me,'” a bystander can be heard saying on the video. “Why they shot the black boy and not the fat boy?”

“Because the things with the blacks,” another man says.

“I don’t know who’s guilty,” adds what sounds like a woman’s voice.

It was the officers’ reaction after the shooting that upset Kinsey and Napoleon the most.

Screengrab / Associated Press'Right now, I am just grateful that he is alive, and he is able to tell his story,' said Charles Kinsey's wife Joyce.

“They flipped me over, and I’m faced down in the ground, with cuffs on, waiting on the rescue squad to come,” Kinsey told WSVN. “I’d say about 20, about 20 minutes it took the rescue squad to get there. And I was like, bleeding – I mean bleeding and I was like, ‘Wow.'”

“Right now, I am just grateful that he is alive, and he is able to tell his story,” his wife, Joyce, told the TV station.

Kinsey was “dumbfounded” by the shooting, Napoleon said.

“He should recover physically but he is really kind of mentally distraught,” the attorney added. “As you can see in the video, he did everything he thought he had to do and then some. . . and still got shot.”

Napoleon said his client was on the ground with his hands up, as in the video, when shot.

“Nobody got up or approached” the officers, the attorney said, adding that the fact the officer fired three times shows it was “not an accident.

“The straw that really breaks the camel’s back, that makes it even more frustrating, is that after my client was shot, they handcuffed him and left him on the hot Miami summer pavement for 20 minutes while fire rescue came and while he was bleeding out,” Napoleon said. “But for the grace of god he wouldn’t be with us.”

He did everything he thought he had to do and then some. . . and still got shot

“That toy truck does not come close to looking like a gun,” he told The Post. “The officers made more than enough time to look and make a determination and not just base it on what they heard on the telephone. They have an obligation to go and look and determine if [reports of an armed man were] right and they had ample opportunity to do so.”

Napoleon said he knew better than most the dangers cops endured on a daily basis.

“You’re talking to someone who’s dad was a police officer in the city of Detroit in the 70s and 80s,” he said. “I understand it. I had a fear when I was a child of whether or not my father was going to come home.

“But at the end of the day, we can’t use that as an excuse to allow police officers to shoot unarmed individuals,” he said. “Just like the police ask the community to not judge them based . . . however many bad apples that are out there, in the same sense, they have to be able to hold themselves to the same standard and not hold the entire [black] community responsible for the incidents that happened in Dallas and Baton Rouge.”

Napoleon said he was already in negotiations with the City of North Miami regarding a possible settlement.

“I have confidence that the city is going to negotiate in good faith and try to resolve this issue,” he said. “At a minimum, we would request that they terminate the officer immediately based on what’s in the video.”

The attorney said he trusted the State Attorney’s Office, which is also investigating, to determine if criminal charges should be filed against the officer.

Napoleon said Kinsey, a father of five, is involved in community efforts to keep youth out of trouble and in school.

“He’s just a solid guy,” he said of his client, who remains hospitalized. “It takes a special individual to work with people with special needs, as this young man did. That shows his character.”

But a glowing structure rising skyward in a concrete exclamation point at one end of the promenade lures your eyes up, away from the ground-level spectacle. At the top, people circulate above it all. Actually, they’re above a parking garage, albeit one with an impressive architectural pedigree and a rock-star name — 1111 — to match.

It’s 1111 Lincoln Road, and if sexy cars are worshiped in South Beach, this is their cathedral.

Miami and Miami Beach have become known for their eye-candy parking decks, which is a statement that seems patently oxymoronic. But a handful of stylish structures seem to be northern garages gone wild — shedding their anemic concrete blah while on spring break.

Dan Forer, Courtesy of ArquitectonicaThe Ballet Valet, nicknamed the "Chia Garage," opened in Miami Beach in 1996, kicking off the area's passion for lavish parking garages.

That makes them part of the South Florida sightseeing experience — something to add to the itinerary of beaches, Cuban coffee, pastelitos, art deco and Wynwood Walls.

“One of the things about Miami Beach, even in the deco era, is, because it’s a resort town, architects were able to experiment,” says Steve Pynes, a partner with Bermello Ajamil & Partners in Miami. “Maybe they feel freer to do something different.”

The standout garages are to typical structures as Maseratis are to minivans.

The cities’ penchant for “parkitecture” emerged in 1996 with the Ballet Valet Parking Garage in Miami Beach. It’s nicknamed the “Chia Garage” for the lush greenery it sports, Chia Pet-style. Those familiar with the late Tony Goldman — the visionary behind Miami’s Wynwood Arts District — will find it no surprise that the Chia was his pet project.

Goldman collaborated with Miami-based Arquitectonica on the design when South Beach was in the early stages of its comeback. At the base of the Ballet Valet, vintage art deco storefronts that had fallen into disrepair were restored.

Craig Hall, New World SymphonyThe Pennsylvania Avenue Garage, built in 2011 in Miami Beach, is more restrained. At night, LED lights illuminate the exterior.

The plants, described as a vertical green zone, flourished and required recent taming, leaving the garage looking bald at the moment, says Saul Frances, Miami Beach parking director. When the plants are filled out, they create a wave of flora, emulating the Atlantic surf one block away.

“Historically, parking garages have been viewed as these concrete monsters making areas not as aesthetically pleasing,” he says. “But our city takes a lot of pride in its architecture.”

Frances adds a tour-guide tip about Ballet Valet: “It’s in the flight path to Miami International, and you can see the garage.”

Although the city reaps frequent compliments on Ballet Valet, it was the arrival of 1111 Lincoln Road that brought renewed appreciation. Miami Beach’s two other stylish garages “are ancillary to the 1111,” Frances says. Folks gravitate to that one and become aware of the other two. When they see them, it’s ‘Wow, they’re kind of jewels themselves.’ ”

Robin Hill, Miami Design District AssociatesEach of the facades on Miami's City View garage was drawn up by a different designer. The garage was built in 2015 as part of the redevelopment of the city's Design District.

Herzog & de Meuron, a Switzerland-based architectural firm, designed 1111 for developer Robert Wennett. In addition to accommodating a mere 300 cars, the landmark houses an event space, a residential penthouse for Wennett, retail and a restaurant.

“Lincoln Road has altered what people think a garage should be,” says Miami architect Lourdes Solera, a principal with MC Harry Associates. “It’s a fantastic-looking building.”

Solera points out what she calls the “humongous” vertical space between floors, which sacrifices capacity for aesthetics.

“The whole building is a conversation piece,” she says.

Part of that conversation happens on Level 5, where the Alchemist boutique occupies a glass box perched at the edge. “People come looking for the garage and find us,” says Amy Bear, Alchemist operations director. “They wonder how we got here. And they love that you can see Fisher Island from here and the bay and the ocean.

“They’ve never seen a shop in a parking garage, let alone one that sells exclusive, one-of-a-kind pieces.

Among those who discover Alchemist are visitors on architectural tours. “There’s a lot of architectural interest because of who the architect was,” Bear says.

Of course, a city’s full deck of preening parking should have a Frank Gehry design in the mix. And it does. Miami Beach and the New World Symphony (NWS) commissioned Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners to design the Pennsylvania Avenue Garage for the NWS Orchestral Academy. It was built in 2011.

Don’t expect a version of Gehry’s famed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, however. The NWS garage, as it’s commonly called, is restrained. It’s wrapped in a metal mesh that’s illuminated at night by an LED light show that’s certainly more attractive than hundreds of outward-facing car grilles.

The light display is best viewed from 17th Street, Frances says, which makes it visible to convention centre visitors.

Among the area’s four standout garages, one, City View, is on the Miami side of Biscayne Bay. City View is notable for having an individual look on each of its four sides, Pynes says. “Different designers were selected to do different facades.

“The southwest corner is gold with metal panels, where portions are bent back,” he says. “The gold catches the light at sunset.”

The structure, built in 2015, was part of the redevelopment of Miami’s Design District. It’s effective, Pynes says, because “it’s visible from the elevated [Interstate 95] highway. It’s almost a billboard saying, ‘There’s something here.’ ”

A glimpse of City View makes you want to instruct your Uber driver to take the nearest off-ramp.

City View’s multiple-personality look was created by design firms Leong Leong and IwamotoScott. The result meets a high bar set by such swanky neighbors as Fendi, Cartier, Harry Winston and Hermès, among others. As the Design District website boasts: “The chicest place to shop in Miami now includes the coolest place to park.”

Another avant-garage garage is coming to the Design District late next year. This one, the Museum Garage, will offer six diverse facades; renderings indicate it will be colourful and playful — another postcard-worthy house of cars.

Terence Riley, whose firm, K/R Architects, is curating and helping design the Museum Garage, says Miami is becoming more like a European destination.

“Yes, you have the beaches and the ocean,” he says. “But now, there’s somewhere to go, performances to see — and parking structures fit into the design story.”

Stylish garages embody an “if you build it, they will come,” aspect, which is the story of Miami Beach. As Riley told me, in a city where everyone drives, the parking garage is the foyer.

Carl Fisher, the entrepreneurial car man behind the first transcontinental highway, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Dixie Highway, helped woo motorists to Miami Beach. He worked to develop the land for Lincoln Road, where businesses included Cadillac and Packard auto dealerships.

The continuing car orientation was clear to me when I took the Miami Design Preservation League’s art deco tour. The pastel beauties, many built when autos were becoming commonplace, overlook a perpetual parade of cars.

Miami Beach, a barrier island just 11 kilometres (seven miles) long and two kilometres (one mile) wide, has a population of 85,000 that swells to 300,000 on any given day. And where to put visitors’ cars poses a creative challenge, which is why the city’s selection of yet another garage architect is about to get underway.

Good architects design within local context. And in Miami and Miami Beach, that context includes beautiful people and plentiful cars — often, exotic ones. For the humans, there are hip hotels. And for those automotive gems: some very nice jewel boxes.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/parking-outside-the-lines-in-avant-garages-if-sexy-cars-are-worshiped-in-south-beach-this-is-their-cathedral/feed0stdMiami Beach's 1111 Lincoln Road is the crown jewel of the area's parking garages. It debuted in 2010 to international acclaim.Dan Forer, Courtesy of ArquitectonicaCraig Hall, New World SymphonyRobin Hill, Miami Design District AssociatesU.S. CDC investigates after 97 fall ill with vomiting on Disney Wonder cruisehttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/u-s-cdc-investigates-after-97-fall-ill-with-vomiting-on-disney-wonder-cruise
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/u-s-cdc-investigates-after-97-fall-ill-with-vomiting-on-disney-wonder-cruise#respondMon, 02 May 2016 21:20:04 +0000https://nationalpostcom.wordpress.com?p=1090209&preview_id=1090209

ORLANDO, Fla. — The CDC is investigating an outbreak of a stomach bug aboard the Disney Wonder cruise ship last week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 92 passengers and 5 crew members reported falling ill.

The ship had almost 2,700 passengers and almost 1,000 crew members. It left Miami last Wednesday and returned Sunday after going to the Bahamas.

A spokeswoman says Disney Cruise Line implemented added sanitation measures such as continuous cleaning of handrails. Self-service stations at buffets and ice cream stations also were discontinued to limit passenger contact with food.

The ill passengers were confined to their rooms for 24 hours, and cruise activities weren’t affected. The primary symptom was vomiting.

The last time a Disney ship had a significant illness outbreak was in 2002.

HAVANA — The first U.S. cruise ship in nearly 40 years crossed the Florida Straits from Miami and docked in Havana on Monday, restarting commercial travel on waters that served as a stage for a half-century of Cold War hostility.

Carnival Corp.’s gleaming white 704-passenger Adonia had left Miami at 4:24 p.m. Sunday. The ship, operating under Carnival’s Fathom brand, will also visit the ports of Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba on the seven-day outing.

The cruise comes after Cuba loosened its policy banning Cuban-born people from travelling to the country by sea, a rule that threatened to prevent the cruises from happening.

Restarting the cruises was an important element of a bid by President Barack Obama’s administration to increase tourism to Cuba after the Dec. 17, 2014, decision to restore diplomatic relations and move toward normalization.

The most recent such cruise, from another U.S. port, was in 1978.

When it first announced the cruises, Carnival said it would bar Cuban-born passengers due to the government’s policy. But the Cuban-American community in Miami complained and filed a discrimination lawsuit in response. After that, the company said it would sail to Cuba only if the policy changed, which Cuba did on April 22.

Several Cuba-born passengers, among hundreds of others, were aboard the Adonia when it docked in Havana, it said.

Alberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images
A Cuban woman waves an American flag as the first U.S.-to-Cuba cruise ship to arrive at the island nation in decades glides into the port of Havana on May 2, 2016.

Carnival said the Adonia will cruise every other week from Miami to Cuba. Bookings will start at US$1,800 per person and feature an array of cultural and educational activities, including Spanish lessons.

Seventy-three-year-old passenger Rick Schneider told The Sun-Sentinel he had waited decades for the chance to make the journey. He bought a Cuban flag for the occasion, which he waved from the deck at protesters who opposed the cruises.

Schneider said he once passed up taking a ferry trip to Cuba in 1957, adding “the time is now.”

The cruise is among the many changes in U.S.-Cuban relations since a thaw between the former Cold War foes began in late 2014. The thaw also led to a historic, two-day trip to Cuba in March by Obama, who met with Cuban counterpart Raul Castro and others.

The Cuban government says the shift in policy removes prohibitions enacted when Cuban exiles were launching attacks by sea after the first Cuban revolution.

On Sunday, Arnold Donald, Carnival’s president and CEO, said the company worked to make the cruises a reality despite the challenges.

“Times of change often bring out emotions and clearly the histories here are very emotional for a number of people,” Donald told reporters.

The Miami Herald reported that a boat carrying some activists protesting the trip to Cuba was nearby in Florida waters before the ship’s departure Sunday. The report said the boat pulled away before the Adonia set sail.

Mary Olive Reinhart, a retired parks service ranger, told the paper that she and some friends from the Philadelphia area were drawn to the voyage by the adventure of it all.

The Fathom brand said on its website that the trip was authorized under current people-to-people travel guidelines of the U.S. government and would include meetings with artists, musicians, business owners and families — along with shore excursions to traditional Cuban sites.

It’s exciting to go places where we’re forbidden

“It’s exciting to go places where we’re forbidden. For me, I want to be at home in the world — the whole world,” she added.

The Adonia’s arrival is the first step toward a future in which thousands of ships a year could cross the Florida Straits, long closed to most U.S.-Cuba traffic due to tensions that once brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The straits were blocked by the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis and tens of thousands of Cubans have fled across them to Florida on homemade rafts — with untold thousands dying in the process.

The number of Cubans trying to cross the straits is at its highest point in eight years and cruises and merchant ships regularly rescue rafters from the straits.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesTerm limits mean President Barack Obama has been leaking power throughout his last months on the job.

The Adonia is one of Carnival’s smaller ships — roughly half the size of some larger European vessels that already dock in Havana — but U.S. cruises are expected to bring Cuba tens of millions of dollars in badly needed foreign hard currency if traffic increases as expected.

More than a dozen lines have announced plans to run U.S.-Cuba cruises and if all actually begin operations, Cuba could earn more than US$80 million a year, the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council said in a report Monday.

Most of the money goes directly to the Cuban government, council head John Kavulich said. He estimated that the cruise companies pay the government US$500,000 per cruise, while passengers spend about US$100 person in each city they visit.

Before the 1959 Cuban revolution, cruise ships regularly travelled from the U.S. to Cuba, with elegant Caribbean cruises departing from New York and overnight weekend jaunts leaving twice a week from Miami, said Michael L. Grace, an amateur cruise ship historian.

New York cruises featured dressy dinners, movies, dancing and betting on “horse races” in which steward dragged wooden horses around a ballroom track according to rolls of dice that determined how many feet each could move per turn.

The United Fruit company operated a once-a-week cruise service out of New Orleans, too, he said.

“Cuba was a very big destination for Americans, just enormous,” he said.

Cruises dwindled in the years leading up to the Cuban Revolution and ended entirely after Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed government.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — The thing to do on a movie set is to get into character. That’s how I found myself conjuring my inner starlet as I strolled Miami Beach’s new Faena Hotel early this year. I walked the red carpet in the lobby and stepped behind the gold-leafed columns to admire the murals, where lions sit next to flamingos and white winged horses fly over red coral beds. Then I meandered outside, drawn by the softly lit skeleton of a nearly 10-foot-tall mammoth, its gilded bones shimmering against the evening sky. The owners paid US$15 million for the beast, created by English artist Damien Hirst using 10,000-year-old bones.

Dazzled by her surroundings, my starlet swirled around and resolved to be naughty. She walked into the Living Room and requested a Cloud Mountain Old Fashioned, the lounge’s signature drink, which uses local sour oranges. It was good.

At the hotel-cum-stage-set, such role-playing is fine. Awash in sumptuous fabrics and luxurious furnishings and dotted with fine art, the Faena Hotel is high-end, but it’s also fun. Don’t miss the playful subtext.

The property opened in mid-December, hatched by developer-wizard Alan Faena and his business partner Len Blavatnik. “We create a stage, an immersive environment,” says Faena, who invited film director-producer Baz Luhrmann and costume designer Catherine Martin to collaborate on the design. “We use people from the cinema because they are used to working from a script, telling a story,” Faena says.

That tale is of Miami Beach’s 1950s heyday. The property rises from the shell of the Saxony Hotel, a former Mid-Beach beauty where Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin performed in the ’50s and ’60s. Back then, “babes” with pointy bras and pinched waists sashayed around the lobbies, and showgirls backed up headliners at the Copa City and other nightclubs.

“In the 1950s, Mid-Beach was the sun and fun capital of the world,” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine says. “The Rat Pack performed here. It was a swanky area. Then it became an area that was underserved.”

Faena and cast worked hard to evoke Miami Beach’s movie world glamour. Faena isn’t re-creating the ’50s so much as conjuring that era’s allure through notable art, noteworthy service (butlers patrol each floor) and design inspired by the ’40s, ’50s and art deco era. Faena’s palette: passion red, as well as sea blue and turquoise, the colour that brightens the trim of scores of art deco buildings.

Attempting to feel somewhat glamorous, my character reclined on a tiger-print couch in the Living Room, where guests sip drinks and munch on small plates. The Living Room is the front of the double parlor; the back room is the Veranda, the dining area. Draperies drizzled with rows of gold palm trees frame both rooms. I imagined Betty Grable, who graced film premieres in 1950s Miami, sliding her pinup-pretty legs into the cheetah-print banquette.

That night, the Veranda previewed a menu from Los Fuegos, the hotel’s “open-fire kitchen,” which specializes in grilled and roasted meats. The outdoor restaurant, now open and overseen by Argentine chef Francis Mallmann, spills over into the Veranda’s space for lunch and dinner. The bone-in rib-eye arrived on a warm iron plate. Another dining space in the hotel is Pao by Paul Qui, which serves fare that mixes Philippine, Spanish, Japanese and French cuisines with an emphasis on seafood. It’s in a domed space dominated by “Golden Myth,” a unicorn sculpture also by Hirst.

The Faena Hotel’s guest rooms are fun, too, especially for people like me who remember visiting great-aunts and grandmothers whose living rooms featured similar but not nearly as nice furnishings. The suite’s china cabinet (who has china cabinets these days?) and the fringed velvet couch cue my nostalgia. Sinking into the plush red couch, I can almost hear my grandmother telling me to sit up straight on her green velvet sofa and to stop kicking in the fringes.

The closet doors in the guest rooms have waterfall veneers, night tables feature faux red coral lamps, and the carpets are art deco-inspired swirls of red, blue and turquoise. Theater-size gold tassels hold back the draperies, as if proclaiming the start of a play.

The Faena Hotel anchors the Faena District Miami Beach, a still-being-constructed mini-verse in Mid-Beach, an area from around 29th to 62nd streets. The district stretches along Collins Avenue from 32nd through 35th streets, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Creek Canal. The project represents $1 billion in development.

The Faena House condominiums are sold out; one unit was purchased for a record US$60 million. Casa Claridge’s, a redesigned Mediterranean-style boutique hotel, is open, and has housed the Faena District’s design teams. Upcoming Faena District additions include more condos; Faena Forum, a 50,000-square-foot arts centre designed by Rem Koolhaas for performances and exhibitions that is slated to open in the fall; and Faena Bazaar, a shopping area with a changing group of vendors, also set to open in the fall.

At the hotel, the Faena Theater, which accommodates 150 at cabaret-style tables (plus some seats without tables), hosts special performances by international and national singers, dancers and musicians. The theater debuted with a one-night performance by two Grammy-winning Brazilian musicians, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.

“I like to create something special – districts that bring together art, music, dancing, singing. We elevate, we show people the value of architecture, a flavour of life that is our flavour,” says Faena, who, along with Blavatnik, transformed Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madero, an area of run-down docklands, into a cultural and entertainment centre complete with a hotel.

When Faena first contemplated his Mid-Beach project, people told him not to do it. “Mid-Miami was considered not a bad place, but nothing interesting was happening here. In Buenos Aires, I developed an abandoned street. We brought the best minds together on how to develop a utopian place. There and in Miami, I am creating something that will last into the future.”

The renaissance of Mid-Beach, notes Mayor Levine, started with the Thompson and the Edition, properties popular with millennials and 30-somethings. Those hotels take a different tack from that of the Faena Hotel. The Thompson incorporates streamlined, retro mid-century modern furnishings, and the Edition’s guest rooms feature light-oak-panelled walls, white tile floors and simple, sleek furnishings for a clean, unfussy look.

With an emphasis on art and period glamour and with rooms priced from $745, the Faena Hotel is probably targeting those a bit older, more sophisticated and with deeper pockets than millennials. My aging Sunset Boulevard star hisses, “Good. Something for grown-ups.”

Says Levine: “Faena is a game changer for Miami Beach. Faena Forum will be a gateway for the arts. The Faena project is the mother ship. It will turn the area into a hip, cool, luxurious, creative corridor.”

As my husband and I leave the Faena Hotel, I have one more part to play: I grab him, and we tango toward our car.

IF YOU GO

Where to stay:

Faena Hotel Miami Beach: 3201 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; 305-534-8800, faena.com/miami-beach.
Of the 169 rooms, 111 are suites. The property has a 22,000-square-foot spa with treatments inspired by South American healers. Rooms from $745.

Where to eat:

Living Room
This lounge serves cocktails and small plates, ranging from empanadas Mendocinas (US$16) to crusty smashed potato with caviar (US$58). The signature Cloud Mountain Old Fashioned is US$22. Open 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

Los Fuegos by Francis Mallmann
Entrees range from US$28 for a roasted half-chicken to US$52 for a whole Maine lobster. A Sunday “asado” (open-fire barbecue) of three courses, featuring choices that include pizza, chicken and salmon, is offered noon-4 p.m. and costs US$75 for adults and US$40 for children. Open noon-11 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, noon-midnight Friday and Saturday.

MIAMI — A doctor has been fired from a Miami hospital three months after a video surfaced on YouTube showing her hitting and screaming profanities at an Uber driver.

The Miami Herald reports that Jackson Health System officials released a statement Friday saying that fourth-year neurology resident Anjali Ramkissoon would be terminated. She’s been on administrative leave since the video went public in January.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvq07KBfhnQ&w=620&h=360]

The Herald says the incident took place in Miami’s Brickell area and was posted by someone using the YouTube account Juan Cinco. It shows a woman hitting the Uber driver in the face, then demanding a ride in a profanity-laced rant.

Police have said officers were called for a disturbance but no report was taken.

In televised media interviews after the incident, Ramkissoon apologized and acknowledged there was no excuse for her actions.

Marsha Halper / The Miami Herald via APRoxanne Dube, the mother of Marc Wabafiyebazu, becomes emotional during the final bail hearing for her son in June at Miami court.

The teenaged son of a Canadian diplomat pleaded no contest Friday to reduced charges of third-degree felony murder related to a double killing in Miami — even though he had no part in the gunplay that left his older brother dead.

In exchange for his plea, Marc Wabafiyebazu, 15, of Ottawa, will have to serve six months in a boot camp starting next week, followed by 10 months of modified house arrest and a maximum eight years’ probation.

If he completes the sentence without incident, the teen will have no criminal conviction registered against him.

“Marc has his future,” his mother Roxanne Dube, Canada’s former consul general in Miami, told The Canadian Press. “He’s going to be saved.”

Wabafiyebazu, Dube’s younger son, has been in custody since last March 30, when he was arrested outside a Miami apartment in which his 18-year-old brother Jean Wabafiyebazu and another teen were shot dead.

Prosecutors did not allege the younger sibling had any direct role in the bloodshed, apparently the result of his brother’s attempt to rob a drug dealer of 800 grams of marijuana. However, they maintained Wabafiyebazu had known of the scheme when they drove in their mom’s car to what police called the “drug den.”

As a result, under Florida’s felony law, they charged the teen as an adult with multiple offences, including felony first-degree murder, which carries a minimum 40 years in prison.

Under the plea deal approved by the state attorney, however, the prosecution made a rare concession to reduce the two main charges he faced to third-degree murder. Wabafiyebazu also pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of aggravated battery and attempted armed robbery.

“Essentially, he is paying the price for Jean,” Dube said. “He is also pleading to the murder of his own brother.”

Wabafiyebazu’s two co-accused, including the drug dealer who fled the scene with his drugs and a handgun, were granted bail soon after also being charged with lesser felony-murder crimes. Prosecutors agree to drop those charges in exchange for their commitment to testify against Wabafiyebazu and a guilty plea.

Last fall, both co-accused pleaded guilty to minor drug charges and were sentenced to boot camp, house arrest and probation which, if successfully completed, would also mean no conviction.

Much of the prosecution’s case against Wabafiyebazu rested on a spontaneous confession a rookie police officer said the youth had made from the back seat of a cruiser as he was taken to a detention facility. Police had denied his requests to call his mother and did not warn him that anything he said could be used against him.

“This is one of the most serious cases I’ve had in this division in a long time,” Circuit Court Judge Teresa Pooler said in approving the deal.

Dube stepped down last August as consul general, a post she had taken up less than two months before the deadly encounter.

In a recent interview with The Canadian Press, she talked extensively of the struggle to cope with the death of her older son while trying to support his devastated younger brother, who found himself behind bars and facing the prospect of a lengthy prison term.

The teen, whom she described as the son every mother would want, had never been in trouble with the law.

Almost one year on, Canada’s former consul general to Miami is still piecing together the shards of a life shattered by the killing of her teenaged son and the grave charges laid against her other boy.

The grief she says at losing Jean Wabafiyebazu, 18, has begun subsiding. Dealing with her guilt has taken longer.

“It was a very long road to go from ’I am a bad mother’ to ’I have made mistakes,”’ Dube told The Canadian Press during a recent interview in her rented Miami bungalow. “There’s a difference between the two.”

Now 53, Dube stepped down as consul general last August after Jean and another teenager died in a hail of gunfire in a dingy Miami-area apartment. Outside, his brother Marc Wabafiyebazu, 15, was waiting in their mother’s car.

Dube had thought little of it when Jean had asked for money to buy a textbook and take Marc to a restaurant and movie. The older teen had been doing well and she thought he could do with a reward. She loaned him her black BMW, with its diplomatic license plates, because his car, which she now drives, was in the shop.

Instead, that March 30 afternoon, the brothers headed to the apartment to meet a pot dealer. Jean was carrying a loaded handgun. His plan, police would allege, was to rob the dealer of about 800 grams of marijuana.

AP Photo/Wilfredo LeeIn this Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016 photo, Canadian diplomat Roxanne Dube speaks during an interview in Miami. Dube's son, Marc Wabafiyebazu, 15, is charged with murder and other crimes in the March 30, 2015, drug-related South Florida shootout that killed his older brother and another youth.

“I didn’t know Jean was capable of carrying a gun and entering an apartment and doing drug-trafficking, let alone to steal,” said Dube, who remains a Canadian government employee on sick leave.

Jean left Marc sitting in the passenger seat when he went into the apartment, where the situation went horribly wrong. Within minutes, Jean and Joshua Wright, 17, would die in an exchange of gunfire.

Outside, a distraught Marc was arrested. Investigators refused his repeated pleas to call his mom, who would go to bed that night wondering why she couldn’t reach her kids by phone.

It became clearer early the next morning.

An anxious Dube was on her way to work when a friend at the Canadian embassy in Washington — alerted by the U.S. State Department, who had been contacted by local authorities — called to ask if her kids were OK, then directed her to a local hospital.

Her unease turned to dread, then horror when the hospital advised her to call police and a detective told her by phone that Jean was dead and Marc was in custody.

At that moment, she said, she knew she had to shape up — for Marc’s sake. “I couldn’t grieve for Jean at that point. There was no space.”

photo suppliedMarc Wabafiyebazu, left, now 15, and Jean Wabafiyebazu, right, now 17. Jean Wabafiyebazu was killed when he went into a house to buy marijuana on Monday, March 30, 2015, and that police subsequently arrested the 15-year-old son.

When a child falls ill, people generally react sympathetically. When a child is accused of being a criminal, Dube would soon learn, a common reaction is that, somehow, the parents must have failed.

“You really feel the blows,” she said.

What she came to understand, she says, is it’s how parents protect themselves.

Dube is acutely aware of the special ridicule reserved for mothers who unfailingly declare their children “innocent.”

True, she said, Jean had fallen in with a rougher, older crowd and had been arrested in Ottawa on a minor drug charge. But she and her ex-husband, whom she describes as a loving and supportive father, sat the youth down, persuaded him to change schools, to clean up his act.

Jean had wept with embarrassment, she said.

There’s no doubt, she said, that he committed a crime that day in Miami — with devastating consequences.

“You have two young lives, full of talent, full of dreams, who died so unnecessarily for two stupid pounds of marijuana,” she said.

On the other hand, she insisted, Marc was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He knows he should not have been there and has taken responsibility for his limited role, she said. But what’s equally clear is that he did not kill or even threaten anyone.

“He did not participate in the felony. He was sitting in the car in the passenger seat, no means of communicating with his brother, unarmed.”

Still, rather than submit to the vagaries of a trial and the potentially severe consequences of a conviction — two co-accused agreed to testify against him and plead guilty to minor drug charges in exchange for bootcamp and probation sentences — Marc Wabafiyebazu pleaded no contest on Friday to four charges, including two counts of 3rd-degree felony murder.

In exchange, the court handed down what is essentially a conditional sentence: boot camp, community supervision, and up to eight years of probation.

“Marc has his future,” Dube told The Canadian Press after the plea terms were finalized. “He’s going to be saved.”
Now living in a cheaper rental in Miami, Dube still doesn’t have her car back. Her surviving child has yet to come home. But Marc has been doing well, and they have started looking forward to the day they can put the tragic chapter of their lives behind them and truly move on.

At the very least, she said, she can now look at photographs of her dead boy and smile.

“It goes away eventually,” she said of the grief.

“I have almost a sense of joy. That he’s with me. He’s with Marc, and he will live through us.

He has managed to tell me somehow that this was meant to happen and he’s OK.”

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — A vestige of the drug wars that made Miami notorious for violence and smuggling in the 1980s is being razed, with its new owners anxiously sifting through the wreckage for any last traces of the reign of Pablo Escobar.

Demolition began Tuesday on a pink waterfront mansion in Miami Beach that the Colombian drug lord owned before the U.S. government seized it in 1987. Escobar died in a shootout with Colombian National Police in 1993.

Diego Urdaneta/AFP/Getty ImagesThe entrance to the house, built in 1948, that used to belong to notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is pictured on January 13, 2016, in Miami Beach, FL, before it was demolished.

“I’m very excited to see the house of the devil disappearing right before our eyes,” said the property’s new owner, Christian de Berdouare, who owns the Chicken Kitchen fast-food chain.

“This was the biggest criminal in the history of the world. I would like to be associated with something more uplifting, but nevertheless, it is a part of the city,” he said.

Diego Urdaneta/AFP/Getty ImagesOne room of a house that used to belong to notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar on January 13, 2016 in Miami Beach, FL. It was ravaged by fire and empty for years before it was demolished Tuesday.

Though the mansion was listed under Escobar’s own name, it’s unclear whether he ever spent any time in Miami Beach.

At the height of his powers, Escobar was one of the wealthiest men in the world, with a cartel that supplied the vast majority of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. Recently recaptured Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman built on Escobar’s expansion and diversified the cocaine business with other drugs including methamphetamines, heroin and marijuana.

Lynne Sladky/ Associated PressMedia capture the destruction of Pablo Escobar's Miami mansion on January 19, 2016. The new owners want to build a more modern home.

At roughly 6,500 square feet, the four-bedroom mansion built in 1948 would have been modest for the “King of Cocaine,” whose net worth was estimated in the billions. The palm-lined neighborhood is now home to Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb and other celebrities who have built massive homes behind tall hedges and gated driveways.

The house has unfettered access to Biscayne Bay, with Miami’s skyline glittering nearby. A former neighbor told de Berdouare that he remembered seeing cigarette boats regularly coming and going in the water outside the house.

He also remembered loud parties and a mustachioed man who traveled with a fleet of vehicles and armed men.

“I think they used the cover of a very residential neighborhood in order to conduct their illicit trade,” de Berdouare said.

Unaware of its history before he bought it from a private owner in May 2014 for $9.65 million, de Berdouare’s wife insisted on having a Roman Catholic monsignor bless the property before they commenced plans for a modern home there.

“A lot of people forget what life was like in Miami in the 1980s, when people were literally doing cocaine out in the open in bars and no one wanted go to South Beach at all and there were shootouts in the street,” said de Berdouare’s wife, journalist Jennifer Valoppi.

Lynne Sladky/ Associated PressChicken Kitchen restaurant owner Christian de Berdouare, left, and his wife Jennifer Valoppi, right, outside of the waterfront mansion formerly owned by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. The couple, who purchased the property in 2014, want to build a more modern home on the site. De Berdouare hired professional treasure hunters to comb through the structure for traces from Escobar's days.

The couple hired professional treasure hunters and a documentary film crew to comb through the structure before and after demolition for ties to Escobar’s cartel. Unusual holes have been found in floors and walls, along with a safe that was stolen from its hole in the marble flooring before it could be properly excavated, Valoppi said.

Valoppi said former federal law enforcement officials warned the couple that people who knew Escobar’s crew might return to the house to steal whatever might remain from the cartel’s heyday. The mansion had been damaged by fire and was prone to break-ins as it sat empty after its 2014 sale.

The seizure of Escobar’s property marked in a turning point in the government’s efforts to stop the drug smuggling, said Mark Schnapp, who was an assistant U.S. attorney from 1982 to 1989 and one of the lawyers who wrote the 1986 federal indictment in Miami that recognized Escobar’s Medellin cartel as an organized business enterprise.

“One of things we discovered in 1987 was the Medellin cartel members actually had (Florida) property in their own names, which was a big surprise,” Schnapp said.

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The seizure of civil assets that began in the 1980s helped finance law enforcement actions against the cartels, in cases that eventually led to, for example, the Miami indictment of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges, he said.

“In a sense it’s kind of the end of an era,” Schnapp said, watching an excavator tear into the garage roof, “but there’s still a lot of drugs that come through Miami.”

Since the 2008 financial crisis, wealthy buyers swooping in and paying cash — sometimes anonymously — have become the bane of traditional home buyers. Now, the Treasury Department says it wants to know if some of those luxury buyers are laundering money through their purchases.

The department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will require title insurance companies that help facilitate such deals to identify the people behind all-cash purchases of high-end homes in Manhattan and Miami-Dade County, Florida. The temporary order intends to pierce the veil of confidentiality often sought by luxury buyers who rely on shell companies or limited-liability companies to shield their identity.

The requirement will make it easier to identify people attempting to hide their assets or launder money, Treasury said in a statement.

“We are seeking to understand the risk that corrupt foreign officials, or transnational criminals, may be using premium U.S. real estate to secretly invest millions in dirty money,” Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, said in a statement.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) A "For Sale" sign is seen in front of a home on October 21, 2009 in Miami, Florida. Financial services firm Fiserv predicts Miami home values will plunge another 29.9 percent by June 2010, on top of price declines of 48 percent since peaking in 2006, leading to the steepest drop among major housing markets.

Cash purchases currently make up more than 20 per cent of home purchases nationally, according to the National Association of Realtors. That is down from a peak of 33 per cent in late 2013, but still up significantly from the traditional 10 per cent. Over the same time span, the luxury market — sales of US$1 million (CAD$1.4 million) or more — has stayed steady at about 2 percent of the market, according to industry group.

But cash purchases are a disproportionate part of the market in Miami and New York. In Miami, all-cash deals were more than 50 per cent of the sales as of November, according to the Miami Association of Realtors. “Miami’s high percentage of cash sales reflects South Florida’s ability to attract a diverse number of international home buyers, who tend to purchase properties in all cash,” the local association said last month.

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The department’s action comes after multiple stories in the New York Times that examined the use of shell companies by foreign buyers. Its order is fairly limited. It will be in effect for 180 days, beginning in March, and only covers sales in Manhattan and Miami-Dade County.

While it does not plug a loophole left in the 2001 Patriot Act, which exempted real estate brokers from rules requiring evidence of potential money laundering to be reported to the government, it could be a first step, said Heather Lowe, legal counsel of Global Financial Integrity, a District of Columbia-based research group. “I am certainly encouraged that they’re looking at this. I suspect this could be a vehicle” for further action, she said.

“It doesn’t make sense to me, otherwise.”

Without additional action, someone attempting to hide their identity or launder money could simply wait until the order expires in August, buy property in another part of the country or simply not use a title company as part of the transaction, Lowe said. To avoid the department’s reporting requirement, she said, “there are a lot of places in the U.S. where I can buy a luxury home.”

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Wabafiyebazu faces charges including felony murder as an adult in a March 30 shooting in Miami that left his older brother and another teen dead. Police say the Wabafiyebazu brothers tried to rob marijuana dealers when shooting erupted.

Defence attorneys have described Wabafiyebazu as an innocent tagalong to a troubled older brother.
Wabafiyebazu is the son of Roxanne Dube, Canada’s consul general in Miami. Dube says her son’s innocent.

MIAMI — A Florida man who killed his wife and posted a photo of the bloody corpse on Facebook was convicted Wednesday of second-degree murder after failing to convince a jury that he shot her eight times in self-defence.

The jury verdict came in the third week of Derek Medina’s trial in the August 2013 killing of 27-year-old Jennifer Alfonso at their South Miami home. Medina told police in a videotaped statement he shot his wife during an altercation in which she threatened him with a knife.

Medina, who did not testify in his own defence, admitted in the police statement taking a cellphone photo of his dead wife’s body and uploading it on Facebook, along with a posting that said he expected to go to prison but was forced to kill her following years of physical abuse.

Prosecutors put on evidence indicating that Medina had vowed to kill Alfonso if she tried to leave him, which she told friends she planned to do. They also pointed out that at 6 feet and about 200 pounds, Medina could have easily overpowered his 5-foot-6 wife without shooting her.

“He planned to execute Jen, and he executed his plan,” prosecutor Leah Klein told jurors in a closing argument. “He was angry and he wanted her dead.”

Alfonso’s mother, Carolyn Knox, burst into tears when the verdict was read after about six hours of jury deliberation over two days. She declined comment to reporters. Medina’s father, also named Derek Medina, would not comment.

Medina showed absolutely no emotion as he was handcuffed and led back to jail, where he has been held since the killing. His attorney, Saam Zangeneh, said there will be an appeal.

“We have to respect the jury’s decision. We just don’t agree with it,” he said. “We think this is a self-defence case.”

The second-degree murder conviction means that Medina, 33, faces a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. If he had been convicted of first-degree murder as initially charged — which requires proof of planning and premeditation — the life sentence would have been automatic.

alter Michot/Miami Herald via AP, PoolDefense attorney Saam Zangeneh, right, looks at a 2012 or earlier video of the murder victim Jennifer Alfonso and defendant Derek Medina, making contact in a home surveillance video during day five of Medina's murder trial Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015 in Miami. W

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Yvonne Colodny set sentencing for Jan. 11. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement her office would seek the maximum of life behind bars.

“No family should ever have to see their daughter killed and then exhibited worldwide on the Internet like some macabre trophy to a husband’s anger as was Jennifer Alfonso,” Rundle said. The evidence, she added, showed that “Derek Medina coldly murdered his wife to heal his own injured ego.”

Trial testimony showed the couple began fighting in their upstairs bedroom because Medina had failed to wake up his wife early that morning to watch a movie, as he had promised. Investigators testified that Alfonso threw mascara containers and towels at Medina, who pointed a gun at her in the bedroom but did not fire.

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In a text message to a friend that morning, Alfonso said she “felt like ripping his face off” and was “about to explode” because of Medina’s actions and added she just wanted more attention.

“I just want to spend time with him but I’m not going to beg,” she wrote shortly before her death.

Later, the altercation continued in the downstairs kitchen — some of it captured on one of the home’s interior surveillance cameras. Medina told police Alfonso pulled a large kitchen knife on him and that he was able to disarm her, then went back upstairs for the gun and shot his wife when she kept fighting with her fists.

“She was trying to take me out,” Medina said in the statement.

Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesPolice stand near the orange door which is the front door to a townhouse where Derek Medina murdered his wife on August 8, 2013 in Miami, Florida.

A medical examiner, however, testified that the eight shots were all fired downward toward Alfonso and that the position of her body on the kitchen floor indicated she had been cowering on her knees when killed.

Medina was also convicted of illegally firing a weapon inside a dwelling and with child neglect because Alfonso’s 10-year-old daughter was in the home at the time of the slaying. The girl was in an upstairs bedroom and did not witness the slaying. But she was left alone for several hours while Medina went to turn himself in to police.

Defence attorneys sought unsuccessfully to admit evidence they said indicated that Alfonso was a heavy drug abuser and had dabbled in some form of Satan worship. They also were unable to get in evidence from a purported “shadow” expert they said indicated two upright figures were fighting in reflections in the kitchen’s stainless steel sink.

MIAMI — “Art Basel” is shorthand here for the celebrity sightings, luxury branding, exclusive parties and traffic that ramp up in early December.

As the weeklong series of art fairs, museum exhibits, performances and business deals have expanded throughout Miami and South Beach over the last decade, locals have developed strategies for making the most of the exposure to the international arts scene.

A top Basel priority: a scooter or bicycle tuneup for zipping around traffic jams and valet stands. Here are some other tips from a few Miami arts insiders for surviving the art week chaos.

MAKE CONVERSATION

Art Basel Miami Beach, the prestigious extension of the annual contemporary art fair in Basel, Switzerland, remains the biggest attraction, with a base at the Miami Beach Convention Center. It officially opens Dec. 3, but many independent fairs and events will open days earlier. Some have had to relocate, consolidating many events in South Beach and Miami’s arts district, as surging development reclaimed the empty lots where they once pitched their tents.

All the paintings, photographs and sculptural installations can start to blur together, and the glitterati crowding the gallery booths can be intimidating. Remember that the art is accessible to everyone, for at least a week, even to those without the budget to take anything home, says gallery owner Bernice Steinbaum, who is showing work at Art Miami.

Take the time to talk to gallery owners, she says. After all, art is a conversation.

A highlight of her booth this year is a wall-mounted walrus by Enrique Gomez de Molina, its shimmering skin created from iridescent beetle wings, with porcupine quills for whiskers. It captures the fantasy of a trophy animal without needing to capture the animal itself. It’s likely to prompt conversations well beyond the art world, touching on the killing of an iconic lion in Zimbabwe by an American dentist.

“I don’t sell wallpaper. I want you to have emotions,” Steinbaum said. “I’m so happy to talk about the work, I’m happy to teach.”

Alan Diaz/The Associated PressAndrew Kaufman poses with his camera for a photo, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, in the Wynwood area of Miami.

GO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE

Take a note from major brands that held lavish events during the fairs last year in downtown Miami. Many of those events were poorly attended, so they’re moving back to South Beach.

“The best play is, just go to South Beach. Go to the hotel events, go to those fairs. Uber it and catch the shuttle,” said Kerry McLaney, founder of Miami’s Independent Thinkers, which is promoting Miami artists at the SCOPE Miami Beach fair. “I got my scooter up and running. There’s no other way to do it.”

While there always will be exclusive parties where everyone wants to be inside the velvet ropes, spontaneity — allowing for bad weather, random run-ins and last-minute invitations — is the key to making the most of the festivities, she said. She cuts through the blast of emails and promotions by checking events posted on Facebook by Miami galleries and collectors.

Finally, resist the urge to see all the art as backdrops for selfies, especially in Wynwood, the warehouse district now known for the street art and murals.

“I would recommend against a selfie stick,” says Andrew Kaufman, a photographer who has documented the explosion of interest in Wynwood’s street art community over the last few years.

He’s written several books on Wynwood’s popularity, subversive culture and party scene during Miami’s art fairs, with titles that are self-explanatory: “BASELGEDDON” and “Arty Gras.”

“Wynwood is the unofficial home of Basel. It’s impossible to ignore, but it might not be the epicenter that it has been in the past,” Kaufman says.

An expanding Wynwood Walls remains a hub, but a less curated survey of street art can still be found with a short exploration of surrounding streets.

Kaufman’s images document the gentrification encroaching on Wynwood, as well as the tension underlying the admiration for an impermanent art form. Some of the neighbourhood’s frontier feeling has dissipated as parking meters and trash cans were installed, he says, but “artists will come whether they’re invited or not.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/scooters-and-south-beach-miami-prepares-for-week-of-art-fairs-crowds-extra-traffic/feed0stdIn this Nov. 17, 2015, photo, art gallery owner Bernice Steinbaum stands in her Miami, Fla. gallery next to a work entitled "Wisdom" by artist Enrique Gomez de Molina, which will be displayed at Art Miami, part of Art Basel.Alan Diaz/The Associated Press